Revisit: The Firm

While 2013’s Papers, Please taught us that paperwork can be fun, it can also be frantic. Sunnyside Games’ The Firm is an often-overlooked favorite of mine that has been out for several years now.

It’s an arcade-style twitch-based game where you, an imminently replaceable stock trader in a large firm, have to swipe left and right on various stocks with limited information at a rate that increases heavily over time.

An endless stream of stocks scroll up from the bottom of the screen. You want to buy green stocks with an arrow going up and red stocks with an arrow going down — swiping right to do so. You want to sell green stocks with an arrow going down and red stocks with an arrow going up by swiping left.

That’s pretty much it as far as the gameplay is concerned. You lose if the pile of stocks get too high, with mistakes resulting in the whole stack being pushed up. There are some powerups that you can purchase, like “vitamins” that slow down time.

It’s also a very dark game. There is plenty of humor around the types of stocks and the names of the companies on those stocks, but at the end of the day … you don’t win.

The stack will eventually pile up and you will eventually lose, which causes you to be fired from The Firm and, unless you toggle an option in the menu to turn it off, leap from the window to your death. It’s extremely macabre, but the game’s visuals and humor balance it out pretty well.